


The Bullet

by Elialys



Category: Fringe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-05 17:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elialys/pseuds/Elialys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 4x22. Peter soon comes to realize that Olivia's temporary death is not without consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

* * *

" _It was something... the way a person's life picked up speed, the way a life was like a bullet aimed at one final target, impossible to slow or turn aside, and like the bullet, you were ignorant of what you were going to hit, would never know anything except the rush and the impact." -_ Joe Hill

* * *

** Part One **

For a few hours, Peter actually forgets all about the bullet.

In the aftermath of Olivia's unexpected announcement, he is so overwhelmed with genuine joy and relief that he simply stops thinking about what has happened on the ship, earlier today. They have been through quite a lot in a short amount of time, and it seems like his brain has decided to black out anything that is not taking place in the present time. His eyes remain fixed on the woman carrying his child, and he feels dazed by what he swears is a soft halo already surrounding her, completely unable to restrain himself from grinning every time their eyes meet and her lips curl up.

Before he was told about her pregnancy, he had been so eager to take her out of this place the moment her doctor let her be, wanting nothing more than to bring her home and keep her  _there_  for probably a few weeks. As it turns out, however, they end up spending another couple of hours in the hospital, celebrating in Astrid's room with actual lemon jello.

His delirious elation even manages to double up when Broyles and Nina join them, to announce that the entire Fringe Division has been promoted -which will make buying that house in Brookline that much more feasible. Before they can start to wonder if they should wait a few days before telling the newcomers about Olivia's pregnancy, Walter decides to share the information by booming ' _I'm going to be a grandpa!_ ' the moment Broyles stops talking.

The old man doesn't seem able to stop grinning from ear to ear, beaming at everybody, and Peter doesn't think he has ever seen Nina Sharp that close to tears before. As he watches her give Olivia a warm, loving hug, he silently hopes that this will offer the two women a chance to bond again. They are forced to put an end to the celebrations when a nurse eventually kicks them all out, claiming that the patient –Astrid, needs rest now. Nina offers to take Walter back to the lab, and that is how Peter and Olivia finally find themselves on their way home.

They are not back at her place for more than an hour when Olivia, barely out of the shower, experiences her first bout of nausea, as if to prove some kind of cliché. Good soldier, she jokes about it and says it has to prove the whole 'morning sickness' thing is really psychological, because she's been feeling mostly fine these past few weeks.

She still ends up curled up in their bed, trying to fight off the discomfort in the quietness of their room. After pressing a kiss to her head, Peter leaves the building again, having promised her he'll be back soon with some crackers and ginger ale. He is still so wonderfully oblivious to everything else but his delight at the thought of having a baby with her in a few months that he almost hops down the street to the small supermarket.

Even the cashier gives him a knowing look when she sees his selection –he has added a few withering flowers to his box of crackers and bottles of Canada Dry.

"Morning sickness?" she asks, peering at him over the edge of her glasses.

Peter offers her an impressed nod and smiles a little too brightly. "Is it still what you call it at this hour of the night?"

She starts scanning the items. "Whoever gave that name to this kind of nausea was obviously never pregnant. I'd bet my next pay check it was a man."

Peter chuckles goodheartedly, before asking: "How can you tell?"

The woman smiles kindly, his giddiness obviously contagious, as she puts everything in a bag. "Got four kids of my own, and twice that number of grandchildren. Also, there aren't that many reasons why a man would buy these things together with a grin on his face. She can't be very far along if you're still smiling about it while she's miserable."

"Six weeks," he announces, even though she hasn't exactly asked, still grinning indeed. "We just found out today."

"Well, congratulation, young man," she grabs a chocolate bar from the candy shelf on display and adds it to the bag. "This one's on the house, for your lady; trust me, she'll be craving it soon enough. Also, tell her to try peanuts if the crackers do no good."

"Will do," he grins, pushing his good hand into the pocket of his coat to retrieve some money. But instead of finding the firm leather of his wallet, the tip of his fingers brush over something small and cold.

His whole body instantly freezes and tenses when he realizes what it is; he feels the smile falter from his lips as all the blood drains from his face, his heart suddenly pumping furiously beneath his ribs. By the time his fingers have curled up around the object and he has brought his hand out again, his pounding pulse has become deafening against his ears.

He opens his fist, and stares at the bullet sitting in the middle of his palm.

He can barely even remember putting it in his pocket in the first place. But his shaky hand  _had_  scrambled for it and put it in there, at some point during the hazy moments that had followed Olivia's return to life. She had been stirring on the table, groaning softly in pain, when a mere minute ago, all that had been left of her was a corpse with a trail of blood slowly tracing its way down her forehead.

The bullet is still mostly covered with her blood. It has dried up and turned brown, brown and flaky; he notices how some of the same brownish powder now covers the tip of his fingers.

"Is it…"

The cashier's voice pulls him out of his morbid contemplation. Like him, the smile has gone from her face, replaced by a wary look, indubitably wondering why exactly he's holding out a bloody bullet for her to see, and rightly so.

For a fleeting instant, he pictures himself grinning again and telling her in the same cheery, conversational tone they had been using seconds ago:

" _Oh, don't worry, it's nothing. My father shot my pregnant girlfriend in the head earlier today, but she was only dead for a few minutes; she started breathing again as soon as he extracted that bullet from her brain by hammering a metal rod into her skull."_

This thought is enough to cause the scene to flash vividly in his mind, more clearly than he had experienced it on the ship, as everything had been blurred out by shock at the time.

He hears the gunshot, sees Olivia's body fall to the ground, her forehead marked with a crimson death seal, the air suddenly reeking of gun powder and burnt flesh. And he sees Walter as he carves another hole in the back of her head, and pushes that rod into the bullet hole, pushing so deep, knowing that if the bullet doesn't come out soon, there is no hope for her.

He finds himself back outside a few seconds later, nothing short of stumbling out of the store, leaving everything behind. Soon, he's standing in the middle of the sidewalk, bent over in half. His only usable hand has closed into a fist around the bullet, a fist now pressed into his thigh as he fights for air. He tries to reason with himself in the hope that it will calm his racing heart and his own violent wave of nausea, but he's having very little success.

His skin already feels clammy under his layers of clothes, and he knows he's shaking, as if he was suddenly experiencing a potent fever. He knows the disease that has crawled into his bloodstream is of a kind that will be hard to fight off, the image of a lifeless Olivia burnt into his heart. Even now, he remembers how long it had taken him a few years back, to get over the sight of Olivia lying motionless and open-eyed in the middle of the street.

And he is powerless against the dreadful scenarios that are now rushing through his mind, filling his head with  _what ifs._ What if the Cortexiphan hadn't worked? What if it had taken too long for Walter to get the bullet out? What if it hadn't come out at all?

But the bullet  _had_  come out, he forces himself to think, rationally, fighting to control his breathing.

He feels it, entrapped in his hand, the metal now warm, his grip causing it to dig into his flesh, and he wonders if what is left of her blood is going to seep through his skin, and mark him like a tattoo.

He craves for the sight of her, then, also now wondering with desperate horror if he'll find her lying dead upon their bed.

He isn't exactly sure how he makes it back home, his sickening terror shrinking his perception of the world, every step bringing him closer to her, and yet making him dread what he will find.

When he reaches the bedroom, he stops in the doorway, staring at her through the shadows; until his eyes adjust, she is nothing but a dark form under the covers. Slowly, she gains consistency, and soon, he discerns her limbs under the sheets, the mess of her hair on his pillow, half of her face buried in it. Her forehead is clearly visible.

There's no dark hole in the middle of it.

As if finally sensing his presence, she stirs then, not unlike the way she had on that table, unburying her face to look at him through hazy eyes.

"What happened to those crackers?" she asks in a throaty whisper after a few seconds of staring, the ghost of a smile already curling at the corner of her lips.

But Peter cannot smile. His insane panic now gone, he feels weak with relief and sick with emotional exhaustion, as well as physical. And he can tell it is dawning on her, feeling the shift in his demeanor since he has left the apartment.

"What's wrong?" she asks, pushing herself up to a sitting position, but now that she's getting a clearer look at him, she doesn't need him to answer.

She can read it all over his face.

"Peter…" she whispers, because there isn't much more she can say, is there?

His name on her lips is like a call, instantly drawing him to her, and he makes his way from the doorway to the bed in another daze, finding himself sitting awkwardly at the edge of the mattress with her arms wrapped around him, his sling still making it hard for them to embrace correctly. But the feel of her against him is better than the lack of it at that instant, holding on to her as firmly as he dares with his good arm, his nose buried into her skin, pressed against her jugular. He lets the feel of her pulsing heart soothe him, as he drowns his lungs with her scent.

"I'm okay…" she whispers in his ear, before pressing her lips to his jaw, her fingers curled up in his hair, and all he can do is tighten his hold.

He has kept the bullet in his right hand, the one that cannot touch her yet, clenching it with as much force as the left one had in the street, ignoring the dull jolts of pain it sends to his shoulder.

Tomorrow, he promises himself. Tomorrow, he will throw the damn thing away.

But tomorrow comes, and he never does.

…

Not only does he  _not_  throw the bullet away that day, but he also finds himself fascinated by it.

It isn't long before he starts the habit of rolling it between his fingers, the dry blood now completely gone. He rolls it, and rolls it, and rolls it, until it becomes warm against the pad of his fingers. He stares at it intently, taking in the smallest details of this tiny thing that almost took away the most important person in his life – _did_  take her away for a few minutes.

Its most obvious characteristic is the way it has bent inward, and he knows perfectly well that this deformation had happened when the lead had hit the hard bone of Olivia's skull at full velocity, perforating her head and destroying all the neural pathways beyond that point.

It is needless to say this behavior, carving the shape, feel and weight of the bullet into his own brain, causes him to feel sickened all over again; he knows he shouldn't be doing this, but again, he also knows that he is not about to forget the vision of Olivia's dead body any time soon, certainly not now, when barely twenty-four hours have passed. He should put it away, though, somewhere he can't see it anymore.

But he keeps on staring instead, rolling it slowly between his fingers; rolling, rolling, rolling…

"How did you get it out?"

Peter is so startled by the sound of Olivia's voice in the room that he drops the bullet, and it spins insanely on the surface of the kitchen table, until he slaps his hand over it a bit too loudly. He turns on his seat to look at her, as she's getting the bottle of ginger ale out of the fridge. It is obvious that she has just woken up from her nap, her hair messy and entangled, her features still puffy with sleep. If her choice of drink hadn't been enough to tell him that she's still feelings nauseous, the lack of color on her face would have been.

He feels like a fool, having been caught like this, the very last thing he had wanted, to be honest, but there is no judgment in her eyes when she meets his gaze, no shock or horror either at the sight of the very thing that had killed her a day ago.

Mostly, she looks curious, which leads him to focus on her question.  _'How did you get it out?'_  His insides twist and turn, as his heart already starts gaining speed beneath his ribs.

"What?" he finds himself asking back, as if wanting to make sure he had heard correctly.

She takes a drink directly from the bottle, before using it to point at his hand, still covering the bullet on the table. "The bullet," she confirms once she's done swallowing. "I've seen enough gunshot wounds to the head to know that, unless the gun is pressed directly to the person's skull, the bullet often doesn't make an exit wound."

He doesn't know what makes him feel the queasiest; the topic itself, or the casual way she talks about it.

He almost answers her, then, because beyond his intense discomfort, he can feel that talking about it with her is the right thing to do, that if he decides right now to make this just one more freak event in the middle of their freak lives, the wound will heal better, if not faster.

He almost answers her, almost tells her how he wasn't the one who got the bullet out, that it was all Walter. But the scene flashes in his mind again, then.

The gunshot. Her body falling. The metal rod being hammered so deep within her skull and the  _sound_  it had made.

_all Walter all Walter all Walter all Walter all Walter all Walter all Walter all Walter_

"Peter?"

Once again, her voice draws him out of his contemplation, her tone soft and slightly concerned now, and he suddenly realizes that he has started rolling the bullet between his fingers again, his eyes fixed on it.

He stops abruptly, getting up from his chair just as hastily, before pushing the bullet into the pocket of his jeans as he turns toward her. She's leaning against the fridge, open bottle still in hand, and she's offering him a look of quiet uncertainty. He forces his features to relax, smiling at her and shaking his head.

"It doesn't matter." He walks to her, his hand instinctively finding its way to her face, and she leans into his touch just as instinctively. "All that matters is that it came out, and that you're okay. You both are."

He kisses her forehead, then, right where the bullet had entered her skull and bent at the impact, twenty four hours ago. His lips linger there, a bit too long, a bit too firmly, as if he could erase the memory of this day with the sheer strength of his love.

But some scars run deeper than others.

That night, he has his first nightmare.

…

What had been  _what ifs_  in his waking hours become full blown visions in his sleep.

He dreams that they're back on the ship, but he's not with her when it happens, lost somewhere in the dark corridors. He always hears the gunshot, though, always so clearly, and he screams her name, running to get to her, to get to her in time.

But when he makes it to the room, she's on a table alright, but it's not any table. She's on an autopsy table, her cold body covered with a white drape, her skin paler than the linen itself, if not for the bloody hole in her head.

And he hears her voice, whispering all around him, even though she lies dead on the hard table.

_Peter, I'm pregnant…I'm pregnant…I'm pregnant…I'm pregnant…_

He's always too late. He always loses them both.

Olivia does her best to calm him down, whenever he immerges from sleep in a panic. He feels weak, for being at the mercy of his subconscious in such ways, for waking up shaking and so distressed, unable to do anything but cling to her for dear life. He's supposed to be strong for her, especially now, but in the dark of night, he feels as frightened as a lost child

She whispers in his ear, reassuring him that she and the baby are okay; she also asks questions, later during the day, prodding gently, trying to make him talk about what worries him so much. She  _knows_ , of course, but she's trying to get the word out of him, as one would suck venom out of a snake bite.

She often asks these questions whenever she finds him studying the bullet, another thing he seems unable to stop doing. A few times, she asks about the shooting again, and in his reluctance to address the matter at all, it never occurs to him that she might  _need_  to talk about it, as much as he does. At first, he keeps on deviating the subject, but before long, he plainly stops answering at all, and so she stops asking.

Soon, it is as if they are walking on eggshells around each other. The night is full of nightmares and fears, and they hold onto each other with painful desperation, his caused by his terror of losing her, while hers is caused by her inability to soothe him. During the day, they pretend the night hasn't happened, appreciating the fact that the world seems to have decided to give them a break as far as Fringe events go, and they get easily distracted by the fact that Olivia now regularly suffers morning sickness, at any time of the day.

For all of these reasons, they have some difficulty finding their footing in the days that follow the Incident, as he has started to think of it –less upsetting than 'The Day Olivia Died', which results in a building tension between them; unsurprisingly, she's the one who eventually addresses it, the only way that kind of tension can be addressed.

Given how restless their previous nights have been, he is more than a little reluctant at the idea of going to sleep, and so he busies himself while she's in the shower. He goes around the bedroom, sprawling himself on the floor to extract the pieces of clothing that have found their way under the bed, his mind set on doing some laundry – in Olivia's case, the nesting instinct that is supposed to come with pregnancy obviously hasn't kicked in yet.

This distraction works for a while, until he finds himself dropping clothes in the washing machine, and he notices the dark stains that cover the back collar of one of her shirts. It only takes him a second to realize what shirt it is, and what the stains are.

Blood tends to spill when a letter opener is used to carve a hole in someone's skull, and blood splatters when a bullet is then pushed out of one's brain.

"Peter."

He hasn't even heard her come out of the bathroom; she's standing in the doorway, now, a few steps away from him, wearing nothing but a simple black robe, her hair still dripping from her shower. He can't say he's surprised upon realizing that, while lost in the contemplation her shirt, his other hand has gotten the bullet out his pants' pocket once more, his fingers now making it roll in a pattern that has become eerily familiar.

He is not surprised, no, but as usual, he's most definitely appalled by what is becoming a habit of his, even more so by the fact that she's witnessing him doing it. All he can hope is that she understands, somehow, that she knows this is not some kind of morbid fascination, but an ongoing realization of how badly he has failed her.

His shame throbs deep, but there is only sad comprehension in her eyes, as they stare at each other, letting him know that she  _does_  understand, on some level. And she has never looked more solemn when she slowly starts to untie the knot of her robe, before opening it, eventually letting it slide on the ground, leaving her standing stark naked, only a few feet away from where he stands himself.

It is almost as if she's daring him, now, daring him to take a good look at her, and see every undeniable proof that  _screams_  of how alive she definitely is. It is there, from the way her chest rises and falls with every breath she takes, to the way her body has already started to quiver slightly from the cold, or maybe from something else; goosebumps promptly erupt all over skin, her nipples tensing too, as drops of water from her wet hair travel over her breasts.

He stares, stirred more profoundly than he could ever explain by this act, instantly overwhelmed by the almost violent wave of desire that crashes through him, then; if the darkening look in her eyes is any indication, she more than reciprocates the feeling, and his body starts humming vibrantly when she walks to him.

Despite the returning tension that now crackles between them, when none of them has even said a word, she still moves slowly, almost tranquilly, and the same calm inhabit her every move as she reaches up for his face. She pins her body to his, pushing herself up on her toes until their noses touch, and he feels her hard nipples graze his chest over his shirt; when she unhurriedly trails her fingers from his face to his hair, a caress that instantly causes violent shivers to break under his skin, it becomes physically impossible for him to remain still, needing to touch her.

He doesn't know when exactly both his hands have opened up, and ultimately, he doesn't care; while the stained shirt falls silently, he briefly registers the sound the bullet makes when it hits the ground and rolls away, but by that time, it has become completely irrelevant. Wrapping her firmly in both his arms, he pulls her up and closer, aching for the feel of her, and almost sighing in relief when their lips meet in an ardent kiss, instantly greatly appreciative of every quiver of her flesh he feels under his palms. Before long, he is almost sitting upon the washing machine, leaning most of their weight against it, until the physical strain causes the dull pain in his right shoulder to spike, soon forcing him to lower her down.

He doesn't loosen his grip on her, though, pulling away slightly, just enough to be able to meet her eyes. His left hand swiftly comes up to her face, and his thumb gently brushes the soft and flushed skin of her cheek, following a line of freckles that is almost invisible right now, but he knows the dots are there.

She brings her hand up to meet his, taking his fingers in hers and slowly directing it lower to place it above her breast; she presses down firmly, so that he can feel the pounding of her heart under his palm. He bends his head down until their foreheads meet, his own heart galloping as it suddenly becomes harder to breathe, his throat painfully constricted. She moves their hands again, leading him downward, now placing his palm over the flat expanse of her stomach, both of them knowing that it won't stay flat for much longer. As she pushes his fingers against the place that is hiding this little miracle of theirs, her other hand goes back to his hair, and her touch is like her eyes; soft, loving, soothing.

What she is telling him without a single word is that he has  _not_  lost her, and above all, they have this to look forward to, now, this future they've made together, one that is entirely theirs.

He wishes he could speak, but even if he had found the right words to convey his emotions, he would never have been able to get them out, a large lump now blocking his throat. Sensing this, it isn't long before she sets their hands into motion again, farther down and between her legs. She ceaselessly shudders when he touches her, closing her eyes and pressing her face against his, her grip on his hair tightening as she guides his movements. Once she is assured that he won't stop, she lets go, her fingers grasping his shirt instead, trying to keep some sort of balance; when she lets out her first low moan, so close to his ear, her breath scorching his skin, it pierces him like a hot blade.

A timeless moment later, they are stumbling towards the bed.

She may have been the one initiating it, but before long, he's the one setting the pace, his yearning for her having reached a painful intensity. He wants nothing more than to be slow and gentle with her, to love her with the tender reverence she deserves to get, now more than ever. But it becomes clear rather fast that  _slow and gentle_  will not be a possibility tonight; he is powerless within moments as he moves over her upon their bed, and she's quick to match his frenzy, her hands pulling and pushing to get his clothes off him.

There definitely is no tender reverence in the way she almost rips them off his skin, her nails then clawing at his bare back as her legs lock around him to keep him as close as possible, her body moving with his with an energy that is as insane as it is intoxicating. He feels like he might break, right here and now, break in half at this feeling of forceful unison, as she swallows him whole, body and soul, their eyes never once leaving the other. In that instant, it is as if she wants to prove herself as much as him, that she is indeed alive.

And she is as alive as she will ever be, beneath him, all around him. There is no heavy limpness, no pallor, no stillness or lack of life. Her skin is flushed, electrified, her breath hot and loud as it melds with his; she is master of her every move.

She is life, and she is blood, a combination that has merged with his own to create that beautiful hope now growing within herself. She is home, his family, what keeps him tethered and makes him whole.

And had she died, he would have died, too.

In the aftermath of their climax, it takes him a few moments to really notice the way his chest still heaves too irregularly as he lies there on top of her, his damp forehead pressed upon hers; his breathing is too loud, and his eyes burn furiously. He knows he should move off her, but he can't. Olivia does move, though, one of her hands already back in his hair, while the other reaches for his face, her fingertips gently wiping the wetness off his cheeks.

"Talk to me…" she whispers, and there is a note of desperation in her voice.

But even if he could talk to her, he doesn't know what he could say, or how to say it. How can he explain the dread he feels, and the smothering shame compressing his heart?

He had promised her. He had assured her that nothing wrong would happen to her, that he would never lose her again.

Mere hours later, she was lying dead on the ground.

He had failed her in the past, in ways that still make him feel sick whenever he focuses his thoughts too long on it, but this, this is worse than anything else. It has become so crystal clear on that ship, just how ephemeral all of this is, how she can be ripped away from him again at any given moment, her, and the child she's carrying, and there is absolutely nothing he can do about it.

He can't protect them.

Rendered speechless by his sad ruminations, he chooses the easy way out, the only one he really knows, lowering his face to hers, and letting his nose trace a slow line upon her skin; over her cheekbone, her temple, and then lower. He does move, eventually, just enough to get the worst of his weight off her so that she can breathe more freely. He remains mostly entangled in her limbs, his ear pressed upon her breast as she draws soothing circles in his hair, knowing that he's failing her again in his inability to talk to her.

Peter doesn't know how to tell her; he doesn't know how to tell her how he feels like he's now the one with a bullet lodged in his flesh, deep within his heart, with no exit wound to let it out.


	2. Part Two

** Part Two **

In light of recent events, to say that Peter's relationship with Walter is complicated would be a gross understatement. If you include his entire lifetime and the few timelines that make it up, summing up their relationship to ' _complicated'_  becomes plainly offensive.

Peter easily gets lost in the confusing notions of what once was but isn't anymore, or what is now but never was before. When he finally –and gladly- accepted the fact that he was in the right place and had been all along, he hoped for a while that Walter would experience the same memory shift as Olivia's, especially since his behavior had changed so much since Peter had 'reappeared' into their lives. But it became obvious rather fast that Olivia's situation was unique and nothing short of extraordinary.

Peter has resigned himself to the fact that Walter will never remember the three years they had before he entered the Machine. Likewise, he doesn't remember the lowest moments of their relationship, like the months that preceded his admission to St Claire, or how his son never visited him there, or how Walter lied to him all of his life about having kidnapped him from an alternate universe, thus causing Peter to run a world apart away once the truth came out.

But for each moment filled with lies and resentment, five more moments spent learning to trust and love each other have disappeared as well. Peter would lie if he said it doesn't hurt, to think about what he lost, of this fragile and yet profound relationship Walter and he managed to build through these years. He needed it as a child, longed for this connection for years, and when he finally had it, it was ripped away from him, like too many things in his life.

Ultimately, though, Peter doesn't think anything will ever hurt quite as much as the memory of his father shooting Olivia in the head.

Fortunately enough, however, his rather unusual life has led him to develop an uncanny ability for burying things down and pretending nothing bad  _really_ happened –and by unusual life, he does mean being kidnapped from an alternate universe, or erasing himself from time, among other similar incidents.

This ability to reshape his perception in order to cope with tragedies is what allows him to regain some sort of normality with Olivia rather quickly during the day time. For a time, at least.

He finds distractions. House hunting is one of them. As it soon becomes apparent, the task is more complicated than he first expected.

He really shouldn't be surprised; what appears to be  _'perfect'_ on paper rarely turns out to be that perfect once you get a good look at it. But in the weeks following the Incident, he makes finding a decent –and affordable- house for Olivia and himself his new priority. It also conveniently distracts him from graver thoughts, and gives him a good excuse to spend many hours roaming the internet late at night instead of sleeping.

Olivia has made it clear very early on that he pretty much has carte blanche, and that she trusts him implicitly on the matter, meaning that she can't really bring herself to care much about real estate. It takes him about a month, but he finally finds what he believes to be the perfect house –or at least as perfect as it will ever be, and insists on taking Olivia on a tour.

She lets him guide her through the rooms, listening to him as he recites facts after facts about the location and the foundations, making sure to tell her about the Indian restaurant only two blocks away, or how the nursery's window faces the yard, isolating the room from any noise from the street. She doesn't make any comment on the presence of a fireplace in the bedroom.

They eventually end up standing in the middle of the empty living room, and when he finally stops talking, he gives her an expectant look, awaiting some kind of reaction from her.

She smiles and nods her head, pursing her lips. "It's really nice," she offers, now trying to look somewhat enthusiastic, and obviously failing.

He chuckles, more endeared by her efforts than upset by her lack of interest. "Try and sound more thrilled about this, honey; you're the one who's going to be paying most of the mortgage on it."

She's smiling almost apologetically now as she comes to stand closer to him. "I'm sorry," she says, putting a hand on his arm, squeezing gently with a matching look on her face. "I've never been good at this. A place to live is a place to live to me," she shrugs, her eyes and smile a bit sad, now. "I guess you could blame it on my parents making me move every six months as a kid, not to mention foster care and boarding school after that. It didn't exactly make me eager to get attached to one place."

He gazes down at her, anything but surprised by her explanation, feeling this surge of shared understanding he so often experiences with her. "I think I can relate a bit. You would never believe it now, but I went through this kinda nomadic phase myself."

"You don't say," she smirks cockily, but her smile softens when he brings his hand up to her face, and she leans into his touch, as she always does. She presses a kiss to his palm, before saying: "I'm sorry your girlfriend turned out to be the least sentimental woman in this universe, and probably the next."

"Good thing she's got this weird fondness for sunrises, then," he teases her, always happy to remind her that she's not completely immune to sappy notions either, and being even more appreciative of the way she always rolls her eyes in response. "Also, I'm not giving up hope on those pregnancy hormones kicking in at some point. We still have seven months to go."

She chuckles silently at that. "You say that as if you're the one who's nauseous twenty hours out of twenty-four, or the one who's going to get more enormous and achy by the day."

"I feel like now is the right time to tell you they also have a broad selection of fast-foods in the area," he indicates then with his favorite 'jackass' smile. "I can make sure I get enormous, too, if it makes you feel any better."

She shakes her head and rolls her eyes again, before moving away from him to walk slowly around the room. Her eyes roam the place, maybe trying to picture their furniture in there. He doesn't fail to notice how she's fidgeting a little, twisting her fingers distractedly. He knows that, no matter what she says, she cares more about this than she'll ever admit, even to herself.

Finally, after a long minute of silent contemplation, she brings her gaze back to his, and the smile she gives him is soft and confident. "I think we should take it."

He tilts his head, unable not to smile back. "Are you saying this just to get me off your back?"

She shakes her head slowly. "No. I'm saying this because I think this really could be our new home. Who knows, the three of us might even end up staying here permanently."

In retrospect, given his own emotional reaction to this statement, he's sentimental enough for the two of them.

…

The sweet, hopeful moments they share during the day are genuine and real.

So are the dark visions that plague his nights. Because the nightmares don't go away.

They get worse.

Peter's subconscious seems decided on coming back with a vengeance at night whenever he has a particularly good day, making sure none of them will forget the trauma of what happened on Bell's ship.

His nightmares were bad enough to start with, but after a few weeks, they turn into night terrors.

Having done excessive research on sleep –or rather sleep disturbances- early on in his life, he knows the official definition goes something like this:

'Night terrors is a _state of intense fear and agitation sometimes experienced on awakening from a stage of sleep not associated with dreaming but characterized by extremely vivid hallucinations._   _These_ _anxiety_ _episodes of extreme panic are often accompanied by screaming, thrashing, fast breathing, and sweating._ _'_

' _Extremely vivid hallucinations'_  are the key words in what Peter now experiences, though the physical aspects of it are true, too. While his visions keep on being about death and blood, he's not on a surreal ship anymore, lost in endless corridors, condemned to hear Olivia die without being able to reach her in time.

It all takes place here, now, in the apartment, in their  _bedroom_. He's already too late, and she's already gone, lying dead on their bed, with her blood soaking the sheets.

And he is completely unable to discern what's real and what isn't when he's having that kind of episode, his subconscious exaggerating every detail in ways that feed his panic and desperation. Since he's not exactly  _sleeping_ , he doesn't 'wake up' from those either. It feels more like a switch turns off in his brain, and reality comes back into focus. But the feelings associated with what he just experienced take a  _long_  while to disappear.

The fact that he cannot do anything to stop himself from being affected physically is another problem.

Whenever he snaps out of these hallucinations, he's rarely in bed anymore, often standing in the middle of the room instead. Olivia has obviously done research on her own, because she's always careful to keep a safe distance between them as she tries and calls him out of his trance, knowing that he's not in control of his actions when he's in such a state of panic.

And no matter how he wakes up, or where, he's always clenching the bullet in his hand.

Obviously, he never threw it away.

During the day, when he pretends everything's fine and even believes it for a few hours, he doesn't touch it anymore, doesn't look at it either; but every morning, he puts it in one of his pockets, making sure it's always on him, barely even questioning his actions. He just does it.

At night, it rests on his nightstand. He has long ago stopped trying to hide it from Olivia's sight, just like she has given up on getting him to talk about it. Just like him, she seems to have decided to appreciate the normalcy of their days instead, while dealing with the nights as well as she can.

Not so long ago, she used to be the one barely sleeping at night, while he could sleep soundly through a storm. Now, on top of her frequent nausea, pregnancy also causes her to feel a kind of exhaustion she cannot fight, and by the end of the day, when they get into bed, she's usually sound asleep within minutes.

Peter stays awake for hours, dreading what will come if he lets his mind drift away.

She might fall asleep much faster than she used to, her body still refuses to be completely inactive for more than a few hours at a time, which is why she often wakes up way before dawn, when he hasn't gotten any sleep at all yet. Whenever they are awake like this together, she pins herself to his back, an arm wrapped comfortingly around his waist, her cheek pressed upon his shoulder-blade, and they breathe slowly in unison.

He's always staring at the bullet on his nightstand, shinning almost eerily in the dim moonlight permeating the room, and she knows it.

"Let it go…" she sometimes murmurs against his skin.

He pretends not to hear her, even though they both know he always does.

He feels her frustration at her inability to make him snap out of this state of mind; empathetic as she is, he knows she feels his distress in ways she shouldn't, but he is grateful for her silent understanding, no matter the strain it puts on them. But Olivia is stubborn and fierce, no matter the issue, and that is why she often doesn't give him a choice in stopping his contemplation, exhausting his body if she cannot stop the reeling of his mind.

Given the things he sees in this room whenever he sleeps, she is the sole reason why he still finds comfort in their bed; when she's moving upon him, she breaks him down with each thrust of her hips, before putting him back together with the force of her gaze, refusing to blink. Her eyes bore into his, reaching down to touch his soul, and the warmth of this raw union soothes his qualms, forcing him to  _let it go_ if only for one ephemeral moment.

But when he sleeps, the cold always finds him, there, freezing him to the core.

For the only warmth that is left in these desolating visions is that of his tears on his cheeks and of her blood on his hands.

…

Olivia is officially fifteen weeks pregnant when the bump literally appears overnight.

She still has a long way to go before it becomes the big and rounded stomach that will be so prominent during the last stretch of her pregnancy, but the change is definitely there, reshaping her silhouette in unmistakable ways to a knowing eye.

It is early on a Saturday morning, and having –once again- had a rather troubled night, Peter is enjoying a few more minutes of rest, basking in the warm and reassuring light of the sun, when Olivia comes back from the bathroom, wearing nothing but her underwear, along with a definite look of bemusement on her face.

"Look at this," she says, baffled, straightening up and turning on the spot to offer him a good view of her profile, and indeed.

It looks like someone is now pushing into the curve of her back, making another kind of curve pop out on the other side of her, when yesterday, the only obvious signs of her pregnancy to them had been her tense and firm stomach –and a bigger bra cup. Now, without her clothes on, and knowing every inch of her body like he does, the bump is unmistakable.

She's absolutely gorgeous, and his heart swells, as much at the thought of their child growing healthily in there, than at the sight of her small, bewildered smile.

According to Olivia, it's a  _girl_  they're expecting, something that should be confirmed the following week at her next ultrasound appointment, and at that instant, Peter wants nothing more than to pull her down onto the bed so he can press his lips to that wondrous bump of hers, while cooing exceedingly over his tiny baby girl…but they always try to balance up the cheesy quality of these kind of moments.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you're pregnant," he says instead with a smug, cheeky smile.

Her shoulders slump and her stature relaxes; yet, the small bump remains. She scowls at him, but he knows she's more amused than annoyed.

"Get your smartass out of bed, Walter is waiting for us."

It's mid-July, now, and the weather has become hot and heavy, though not too humid yet. They are supposed to meet Walter at the lab, for no valid reason. Astrid has decided to take the month off, a well-deserved break after everything they've been through this year, and Walter has been feeling more lonely than usual without her around, which explains why he keeps coming up with all sort of lame excuses to get Peter and Olivia to come by the lab everyday.

Not being officially on duty, Olivia doesn't put on her usual work attire, allowing herself to wear something more casual and adapted to the weather. She still puts a light jacket on, but the gray top tank she wears underneath obviously does nothing to hide the new change in her figure, rather the opposite, actually.

Peter rarely gets to to see her acts so…normally, like any mother-to-be enjoying this apparent sign that her baby is growing well. The fact that her nausea has finally completely subsided a few days ago now undoubtedly has something to do with her atypical cheeriness. Maybe those pregnancy hormones are finally kicking in, too. All that matters is that Olivia's happiness is contagious, and Peter shares her good mood for a while, completely forgetting about the things that was haunting him a few hours ago in the dark, and almost looking forward to spending a lazy day in the lab listening to Walter's ramblings despite his lack of sleep.

Everything drastically changes on their way to Harvard University. And it is  _ridiculous_ , really, what can set him off these days.

Two things, completely independent from one another, happen simultaneously. They are less than five minutes away from the lab when a car backfires in an adjacent street, exactly when a stupid driver attempts to cut in front of their vehicle without any warning.

Fortunately, Olivia is the one driving, because at the sound of the snapping noise, so similar to a gunshot, Peter freezes in what has become a familiar frightened state these past few weeks; had he been driving, he doubts he would have been able to make the car jerk aside to avoid the collision, a move that Olivia obviously manages, causing his shock to worsen.

While Olivia grumbles for the rest of the way, already regretting not putting her flashing lights up right away and arresting the stupid driver, Peter falls into a grave silence, agreeing on occasion with whatever she's saying, but he's mostly trying to get a grip on himself, aggravated by how shaky he feels.

So far, they've been lucky to have a rather uneventful summer, with random cases that have been ridiculously ordinary and harmless, now that the Bridge has been closed and that the Jones/Bell threat has been averted. Realistically, Peter knows that sooner rather than later, willingly or not, Olivia is going to find herself in a gun chase again, probably long before the end of her pregnancy, and he's going to have to deal with it.

If he listens to the most over-protective part of himself, he wants to ask her to never put herself in that kind of danger,  _ever again_. Not only does he know that it's hardly ever her decision, there is also the fact that she might feel the urge to punch him in the face with the barrel of her gun if he dares make that kind of suggestion. Knowing her, she will probably be outside trying to save the world from ending again when she goes into labor.

In any case, what started as a good day for him has now been officially ruined, as he finds himself on edge, flinching at the slightest noise, unable to get the firing sound out of his head. For obvious reasons, he immediately knows he won't have much patience for Walter today, which is why he lets Olivia be the main receiver of his harmless eccentricities, while he pretends to be busying himself on something else, farther away in the lab. What he really does is watch the pair quietly, his eyes mostly on his father.

Once again, his ruminations have taken him back to the ship, and to the Incident.

Rationally, he doesn't resent Walter for what he did; after all, he  _did_  save Olivia and both universes in the process. In some very twisted way, he finds his actions almost admirable, for having made the choice he made, for accepting that sometimes, sacrifices need to be made, something he failed to see years ago, in more than one timeline.

But Peter's rational self doesn't hold much power against the part of him who depends on Olivia as one depends on oxygen to live.

The way Walter had reacted so  _fast_  is simply unnerving. As soon as Bell told him Olivia was the power source fueling the creation of his new world, the ' _living uncertainty engine',_  Walter just…shot her.

What is even more unnerving is the thought that, if he did it once, he can do it again.

Olivia's words still haunt him to this day, weeks later, those words she told him a couple of hours prior to her death.

" _And now, you know, years later, nothing's changed. I'm still that little girl, and William Bell is still doing experiments on me. I'm just still being used."_

He comforted her, back then, telling her that she wasn't alone anymore, which was true, and still is now. But he had comforted himself, too, as he silently promised her he wouldn't let anything bad happen to her, ever again.

Evidently, her words had been truer than his, and he is now condemned to live with the knowledge that his efforts will always be in vain.

He cannot protect her from Death.

Almost worse, he cannot protect her from  _them_ , from these men who started it all.

Olivia has been used all of her life, often asked to do things against her will; a gifted soul who only longs for normality. But normality was taken from her the moment William Bell and Walter Bishop poured cortexiphan into her bloodstream when she was just a child.

They have made a power source out of her, one capable of destroying worlds, not unlike the way Peter can when he interacts with the Machine. And each of these men has a role to play; one of them turns the power on.

The other one turns the power off.

Walter told them the cortexiphan is mostly gone from her system, now, but he also said some of it will always remain, that it has become part of her. They still don't know where Bell has gone to.

What if one day, he decides to come back and play God again? What if he uses her,  _kills_  her, by his own hands, or through Walter's?

It is strange really, how the brain works, especially when one suffers from some serious PTSD and doesn't want to admit it. A mind under stress is very good at playing tricks, and Peter's mind decides to play one right now, as his eyes remain glued to Walter and Olivia.

Suddenly, all he can see is the blood on his father's hands.

Olivia's blood.

And it doesn't make any sense at all; she's standing right next to him, as fine as can be. She's even smiling softly, that small smile he knows means Walter is talking about the baby again. He cannot be sure, as he has become completely deaf to any sound besides the thumping of his heart.

Everything seems to be happening in slow-motion, now, with the exception of his pounding heart, beating so loudly and fast against his ears. All that matters is that he  _sees_  it, slowly sliding down Walter's fingers; Olivia's lifeblood, their  _baby_ 's lifeblood until she is out of her mother's womb.

It isn't real. Every lucid part of him insists that this is not real, cannot possibly be real. But it  _feels_  so real, and it had been real, and god what if it's real?

Olivia straightens up a bit more fully, then, pushing the hems of her jacket open so that Walter can see her newly showing bump better; the old man is beaming, and if Peter hadn't been deaf to everything but his racing heart, he would have heard his delighted exclamation, followed by his comment that starting to show this early surely means she's carrying a boy, to which Olivia purses her lips with a small, knowing shake of her head, one that is very, very slow in Peter's world.

And then Walter is asking her something, a hopeful look on his face. Olivia's smile softens even more, and she nods her approval, still very slowly, keeping her jacket open, saying a few words Peter cannot hear. But he doesn't need to hear the words to know what she has just allowed him to do.

His insane panic worsens, becomes all-consuming, and he watches in frozen horror as Walter's bloody fingers reach for her, for the bump, and something dark snaps inside of him.

"Don't touch her."

His temporary deafness is gone at once, and he hears his own words booming through the lab, the quality of his voice almost foreign even to himself, his tone low and menacing.

It is all it takes for him to snap out of his hallucination, but it's already too much.

There is no more blood on Walter's hands; there never was any in the first place. These hands have stopped their movement at his command, and there is a changing look on the old man's face. He quickly goes from shocked to something close to pain and shame, his mouth already quivering, obviously understanding what has prompted Peter's sudden livid shout.

As Walter lowers his gaze in sorrow, Peter feels the tension still blocking every muscle in his body, knows that his face is still constricted in a mask of dark contempt; his vision may not have been real - _they_   _never are,_  his fear and anger are real, and he doesn't seem able to slow the panicked pounding of his heart.

When he sees Olivia's hand come to rest briefly and comfortingly upon his father's arm, Peter finally turns his gaze to her, their eyes instantly meeting. She's looking at him with something close to dismay, and there is honest concern and confusion on her face, quietly asking him what the hell is wrong with him.

That is something he would very much like to know.

_What the hell is wrong with him?_

Suddenly, Peter feels nauseous all over again, physically unable to stay  _here_ , having to face the consequences of his brief bout of insanity.

All he can do is run away from this.

Without a word, he escapes the lab and finds the nearest bathroom, falling down to his knees in one of the stalls.

When his hands come to grab the bowl and he dry-heaves ineffectively over the water, he realizes that the fingers of his left hand have once again closed around the bullet. He guesses he got it out at some point, while he was hallucinating. His chest still heaving spasmodically, he straightens up slightly and opens up his trembling fingers.

He stares at it, then, sitting in the palm of his hand, his stomach lurching as his head throbs, now feeling weak and feverish in the aftermath of his delirium. Sickened by the fact that it is now affecting him in the daytime, too, he feels nothing but pure hatred towards that tiny piece of lead.

Without giving it much thought, he tilts his hand, and the bullet rolls off his palm, falling into the toilet bowl; he watches as it sinks straight to the bottom and stops there, the water still rippling from the intrusion.

His fingers find the flush handle, awaiting nothing but a small pressure on his part to swallow the damn thing away, bury it deep into the sewers, exactly where it belongs, where he would never have to look at it again. He could do it, right now,  _should_  do it.

But the seconds pass, and Peter doesn't move, feeling the sweat slowly dripping down his forehead.

He cannot do this, he realizes then. Flushing it down the toilet just seems…wrong, somehow, almost disrespectful of everything that has happened. He hasn't been keeping this memento for weeks only to flush it out, the way he would have his own vomit if he had managed to purge his stomach.

He doesn't know  _why_  he's keeping it, but maybe he'll figure it out, someday.

Just as impulsively as he dropped it in there in the first place, his hand dives into the bowl and he retrieves the bullet –definitely not one of his proudest moments.

Soon, he's going to have to leave the room and face Olivia, who is probably waiting for him, outside in the hall. She will be worried, and she will be caring, as she always is; he will apologize for his behavior, to her and to Walter. He will blame it on his lack of sleep, on the new moon, and god knows what, all the while ignoring her begging looks, begging him to  _talk_ to her, or to someone else, to get help, because he obviously needs it.

But stubbornly, and surely a bit arrogantly, he feels this is one battle he has to fight on his own.

For now, he simply sits there on the ground, his damp temple pressed against the cool wood of a stall covered with stupid scribbles, fighting a new wave of nausea as he clenches the bullet between his dripping fingers.

This is just one more thing he'll pretend never happened.


	3. Part Three

**Part Three**

A couple of months ago, Astrid briefly borrowed Peter's phone to install an app 'for dads' on it, meant to inform them week by week about the size of their baby, by comparing it to common objects. A beer cap, a computer mouse, an iPhone...at some point, later on, it would apparently be as big as a pizza –though Peter would like to argue the difference between  _size_  and actual mass with whoever made the app.

According to it, Olivia being in her sixteenth week of pregnancy, the baby is now the size of an avocado.

Stretched on the ultrasound screen, it looks bigger. It also looks much more real, no matter how grainy the picture quality is, or the fact that the lame black and white image doesn't let them see many details. What they see is more than enough; the distinct shape of a head, and limbs, not to mention that strong, steady sound that is resonating through the room, a loud and fast  _ThumpThumpThumpThump_ that lets them know their baby is alive and well in there.

The doctor freezes the screen, and the baby's profile is so defined he can see lips, and a nose he is already convinced will look like Olivia's. As the obstetrician takes the probe away, the room instantly becomes too quiet again, and Peter has to fight his sudden urge to ask her to turn it back on.

"Everything looks great," she says in the same confident tone she has been using ever since she joined them in the room.

Peter forces himself to turn is gaze away from the screen to look down at Olivia; she's still staring at the frozen picture, her expression seemingly as frozen, but he knows better. He easily notes all the little signs that are betraying the fact that she's undoubtedly fighting against her hormones right now.

One of his hands already holding hers, he squeezes her fingers gently; she finally raises her misty eyes, and when their gazes meet, she offers him a soft smile. She looks away again when she is handed a paper towel to wipe off the gel from her stomach.

"Are you eating well?" The doctor asks then, studying her chart. "I know you had a pretty bad case of nausea during the first trimester, but it's been gone for a few weeks, now, is that right?"

Olivia nods shortly, focused on cleaning off her skin, her lips already slightly pursed; Peter knows if there is one thing she despises about being pregnant, it is how people insist on telling her how she's supposed to eat, or behave, as if she had suddenly become incapable of taking care of herself. "I've been eating three meals a day."

"Picking at your food isn't considered  _eating_ , Olivia," the doctor says with a knowing look that matches her tone, which almost causes Peter to chuckle –he doesn't, not wanting to unleash his girlfriend, especially considering how her mood is quickly darkening.

"What are you getting at?" Olivia asks a bit crossly, throwing Peter an unamused look as if he was responsible for this.

"According to your chart, while the baby is growing well, you, on the other hand, seem to keep on losing weight, instead of gaining it. If you're eating correctly, that means something else is causing this. Is anything stressing you out, Olivia?"

Olivia cannot help but blush slightly at this, now looking uncomfortable and a bit cornered; she briefly wipes the corner of her eye with a knuckle, another small detail Peter doesn't miss. "Nope," she shakes her head, still avoiding everybody's eyes. And then, as if just remembering something, she shrugs. "Well, we  _are_  moving in three weeks, so that's been a lot of work, with all the packing and organizing."

At those words, the doctor throws Peter a grave, disapproving glare, and he raises his free hand in defense, unable not to feel the way Olivia is now clenching his fingers a bit too hard. "Hey, you don't know how stubborn she is. I do my best to keep her from doing anything too straining, but she happens to have a gun."

The physician is staring at them both now, and he doesn't know about Olivia, but he's starting to feel like he's back in grade school, being scowled by an unhappy teacher –though he somewhat doubts Olivia has ever been in that kind of situation. The closest to it would be Broyles' frequent disapproving speeches when she ignores orders or does something insane, but they never seem to faze her in the least.

Finally, the doctor drops her eyes back to her chart and scribbles something. "I'll add some complementary vitamins. Try and eat bigger portions, more regularly," she says, to which Olivia huffs discreetly and definitely a bit defiantly, now, her eyes already back on the screen, while her free hand comes to rest on her stomach. "Do you want to know the sex? I was able to see it pretty clearly."

Olivia doesn't even look back at her doctor when she says: "I already know the sex."

Obviously, this is turning into some kind of silent competition for female dominance, and all Peter can do is remain as quiet and still as can be, his eyes moving from one woman to the other.

"Alright," the doctor says, good-spirited –and obviously used to dealing with touchy pregnant women, "what is your guess?"

Olivia is smirking a little now; her gaze is fixed to the frozen image, while her fingers have started moving over her shirt. To her, it has never been a guess, but Peter knows she's not going to argue this with the other woman, knowing she wouldn't understand the unique quality of their bond even if she tried to explain it.

"It's a girl," Olivia says softly, her mind and thoughts already a thousand miles away from the room. Or maybe they are a thousand miles within, entangled with their daughter's.

And Peter thinks she was always meant to wear motherhood like a crown.

…

Olivia is not in bed anymore.

Her absence is the first thing Peter notices when he wakes up from a rare, dreamless sleep. The room is extremely dark, too dark; clearly, it is still the middle of the night, but he knows he is alone in the room long before he attempts to find her with blurry eyes.

He extends his hand, running his palm over the spot of the bed she usually occupies, and finds the linen cold under his touch.

Just like that, his heart-rate picks up speed. There is absolutely no valid reason for him to worry, but he doesn't need reasons anymore, his gut-wrenching fear usually triggering itself on its own nowadays. There are many logical explanations for her absence. She may be sleeping because of her pregnancy, insomnia hasn't completely disappeared from her life either; she's undoubtedly in the living room, sitting on the couch with her laptop, going through some old case.

But this thought doesn't reassure him.

It's too dark.

He leaves the bed, and quickly exits the bedroom. As he advances slowly towards the living room, darkness only seems to grow thicker. In front of him stands a sea of boxes, piling up to the ceiling. He knows these are the boxes containing everything they'll be moving to their house in a few days, but right now, they look like looming towers, occupying every inch of space in the room, leaving him only a tight path to move forward. And only one thought pulses through his head, one of dread and certainty.

He needs to get to the kitchen.

_Peter…_

He hears the whisper, as it echoes all around him, and then it's travelling up his spine, seeping through his flesh, spreading in his blood, and his dread worsens. His breathing is already loud and getting more frantic by the second, because he knows what he will find there, but he needs to keep moving anyway, he needs to get to her.

 _I'm coming, Olivia_ , he thinks, making his way through the endless rows of boxes, and they are closing in on him, now, but he doesn't care. He will break through each one of them if it means finding her.

They never completely block his way, but they make it incredibly hard for him to advance, the air getting rarer around him, as if the darkness was taking corporal form; as he walks, he also realizes that the air has become heavy with a smell, metallic and earthy. It is a coppery scent he has encountered once too many times in his life, one he certainly never wanted to smell in his home.

_Peter…_

It guides his steps, as he advances in what has become a familiar kind of morbid terror; the room seems to be stretching around him interminably, all the while slowly smothering him, and the whispers keep on echoing restlessly.

_Peter…Peter…Peter…Peter…_

When the kitchen table finally comes into view, he cannot say he wasn't expecting the sight of it, or rather the sight of the body lying upon it. She is the only thing perfectly visible, her milky white skin shining too brightly through the unfathomable darkness.

_no_

There already is a small, bloody line tracing its way down her forehead, the crimson liquid just as impious upon her pale skin. Her head is turned towards him, and her eyes aren't closed, not completely. They are glassy and blind, the way they had been a few years ago, when she had been lying broken on the pavement. One of her hands hangs limply over the edge of the table.

_Peter…_

He becomes aware of another sound, then. It is less ethereal than her whispers, almost too loud in comparison, obnoxious in its realness.

It is a soft and slow… _plic…_

… _plic…_

… _plic…_

He keeps on walking closer despite his horror, despite the pain and desperation now ripping his insides apart, and too soon, he finds the source of the sound. The hole in the middle of her head isn't the only place oozing blood.

A much larger amount of it has pooled on the table, between her legs, so much of it that it is now falling over the edge and dripping on the ground, one drop at the time.

… _plic…plic…plic…_

_nononononononononono_

She's staring at him through those glassy, dead eyes of hers. Something falls from her hand, then, something small that hits the ground more loudly than any drop of her blood, and it starts rolling away from her, rolling towards him.

His eyes follow it as it comes closer and closer, until the bullet stops at his feet.

Something breaks inside of him when he realizes that the bullet is out of her brain, that it has been out for a long,  _very long_  time, and that she really is too normal now for her to miraculously heal again.

She is long gone.

He has reached her, now, and his hands are on her in an instant, grabbing her, holding on to her as his sorrow causes every inch of him to shake. One of his arms slides under her shoulders while the other slips beneath her knees, and he feels the thick blood on his skin, still warm, all that is left of their daughter, and her lifeless form crumbles with him as he falls to the ground.

He rocks her body, desperately, his broken sobs muffled against her neck. She's gone, they both are, he has failed to protect them, again, and now they're gone.

_Peter…_

He feels hands on him, trying to force him to let her go,  _to let it go_ , but he cannot let her go.

_NONONONONONONONO_

It's too late, IT'S TOO LATE, he wants to shout at Walter, because he's obviously the one trying to pull him away. There's nothing they can do, they're gone; the hands keep on grabbing him, and he keeps on pushing back, forcefully. He refuses to let go, to let it go.

_Peter…_

He cannot let it go.

_Peter…_

cannot let it go

_Peter_

_let it go…_

"Peter."

What had been a whisper seconds ago isn't anymore, Olivia's voice reaching him with deafening clarity.

In a jolt of instinctive panic, he moves away, or rather stumbles backward, only stopping when his craze movements cause him to knock over what turns out to be a pile of box, their content scattering to the ground, the commotion freezing his every move.

The room is still dark, but this darkness is different from the one that had been permeating what must have been another vision; it's less opaque, and through the mist in his eyes, he sees Olivia's form, and there is no ghostly light surrounding her now.

He can barely make her out, as she sits a few feet away from him, but this blurry sight is enough to prove that she's alive. His panic hasn't subsided yet, his entire body still shaking forcefully, drenched in sweat, his breathing nothing but distressed gulps of air. His throat is raw from his grief, and his heart pounds furiously within his rib cage. He focuses on her, repeating again and again in his head that she's  _fine_ , that it wasn't real.

After a few moments, when she's sure he's back here with her, she approaches him cautiously, before letting him reach for her, and he grabs for her a bit too strongly. At this point, this has almost become another sickeningly familiar ritual; she knows nothing will calm him down more efficiently than her touch, her fingers soft and soothing as she moves his damp hair and wipes his face off, her nails grazing his scalp when he embraces her and she repeats in his ear what he was telling to himself. It's over, she's fine, she's okay.

Eventually, he slowly comes out of his frightened state, enough to relax his grip on her when he realizes just how firmly he's been holding on to her, immediately mindful of the fact that he's been forcing her to sit in a rather awkward position on the living room's floor. He pulls away slightly to tell her that she shouldn't. He's not sure what exactly she shouldn't do, but she just  _shouldn't_.

But the words never come out of his mouth, his entire body freezing once more as a new surge of adrenaline floods his veins at the sight of her face.

There is a thin trail of blood on her chin, her bottom lip having split near the corner of her mouth.

When he reaches up for her face, he barely notices as the bullet falls from his loosening grip. But as the tip of his trembling fingers brush her cheek, she cannot help but flinch slightly, and only then does he notice the darkening skin of her cheekbone.

_no_

"Did I hit you?" he immediately asks, his voice so low and raw he barely recognizes it.

She shakes her head softly, but it isn't in negation, more in dismissal. "I'm fine," she repeats again, but for the first time since he's come out of his terror, he notices how her voice shakes faintly, too, as does the rest of her body against him.

He pulls away even more to get a better look at her, and she definitely looks too disheveled, as if…as if she's been in a fight.

"God, Olivia…" he chocks out, his heart back to a racing speed as it sinks in mortification, and a familiar nausea washes through him, along with a new kind of horror.

"I'm fine, Peter," she insists, grabbing his face, but he shakes her hands off. "It's my fault, I came too close, you were just…I shouldn't have, but you were…"

Having grabbed her shoulders, he pushes her away, not exactly forcefully but decidedly, feeling like he might throw up on the floor any second now. "The baby," he almost stutters, "the baby, did I, did I hurt…"

No matter how intent he is on getting her away from him, she's refusing to let go of his hands, clenching his fingers vigorously. "She's  _okay_ , you were just…you were trashing, and I was too close, it was an accident."

As a last resort, he grabs her hips and forces her off him, before stumbling up to his feet, the world spinning dangerously fast around him. He has rarely felt so ashamed of himself. "An acci…Olivia, I hit you hard enough to split your lip open."

Now sitting among the wreck on the floor, she's looking up at him, remaining eerily composed and calm. Slowly, way too slowly, she brings a hand to her mouth and wipes the blood off her chin. She then stares at it, and it looks so bright against the pale skin of her fingers.

She looks back up at him. "It's just a little blood," she says, almost indifferently.

If his head hadn't been throbbing so much, and if he hadn't felt so close to having another kind of panic attack, he would have told her that this would never be  _just a little blood_. It could never be just a little blood, not when he had seen her lying dead with that same damn blood oozing out of her.

Peter is still rational enough to realize that maybe, just maybe, she has said these words in the hope that she would get this exact reaction out of him, once again trying to corner him into talking about what has been slowly driving him insane these past couple of months.

But he can't.

He can't stay here.

"I have to go," he says suddenly, swiftly turning around and almost racing to the bedroom, his strides unbalanced and awkward, aware that he keeps on stepping on things that were in boxes not so long ago and not caring. Olivia follows him of course, but he ignores her, too, as he starts to look for the clothes he had discarded only a few hours ago.

"Peter, what are you doing?" Her calm demeanor is starting to crack; he hears the bubbling frustration in her voice as he puts his pants on.

"I have to go," he repeats, now slipping his shirt over his head. "I can't stay here anymore."

"Go  _where_?" She tries to stop him as he walks past her to exit the bedroom, but he manages to stay away from her grip. "It's 2am, Peter!"

She's not happy, and he doesn't need to look at her face to know she's officially fed up with his behavior. He doesn't  _want_  to look at her face, not wanting to see the look in her eyes, whatever it might be.

"I'm sorry, Olivia," he says, quite wretchedly as he escapes the apartment. "I just can't stay around you right now."

It only takes him ten miserable minutes to realize that, for the first time in weeks, he hasn't taken the bullet with him.

And he finds himself hoping that if Olivia realizes it, too, she will have the good sense to do what he hasn't been strong enough to do, and throw the damn thing away.

…

He spends most of the following day walking and drinking.

He enters a bar, drinks a few shots, and when he starts feelings too dizzy, he pays the tab and takes a walk, having no destination whatsoever, simply trying to forget the sight of Olivia's bruised face, or dead body.

It never works, of course, which is why he always ends up entering another bar, and ordering more whiskey, before taking another long walk. Rinse and repeat.

Olivia tries to call him every hour or so, and he stubbornly ignores his vibrating phone. Eventually, she leaves a message on his voicemail, and doesn't try calling again after that. He waits another couple of hours, when his latest walk has cleared his mind enough, before listening to the actual message.

She sounds positively pissed off.

" _I understand that you're going through your own thing, but taking off in the middle of the night and not giving any sign of life for hours, refusing to answer your phone, is not okay. You're not the only one worrying, here, Peter, so if you could let me know you're still alive, I'd appreciate it."_

She's right, of course. Letting her worry about him is not only hypocritical of him, it's also plainly cruel and unnecessary. His shame about what he has done –not only in the past twelve hours but in the past two months as well, makes it incredibly hard for him not to stay away, but he knows he cannot keep on hiding, cannot simply run away from this. His running days are long gone, and they both know it. He starts walking back home, but he's still too much of a coward to actually call her, ending up sending her a pitiful ' _on my way now'_  message, to which she doesn't answer.

He had assumed she would be working –it's the middle of the afternoon, and had counted on it to maybe take a shower and try to turn himself back into a fairly decent human being before she got home, so he could tell her about what he decided during one of his –drunken- soul searching walks. But when he reaches her place, she's already there. Judging by her outfit, she hasn't gone to work at all.

She's sitting in the living room, among the wreck he's made last night, now obviously trying to clean up and put everything back in the boxes. He stops a few feet away from her, standing there awkwardly, until she raises her eyes to look at him.

She is unsurprisingly livid.

"You should have called," she says, sternly.

He chooses to ignore her remark, taking her in instead. She has gotten dressed, but not in her usual outfit, and her disheveled hair alone is an obvious sign that she has chosen to stay away from people today.

"You didn't go to work," he points out a bit more darkly than he intended, but he cannot help himself, his shame throbbing painfully, like a gushing wound. And despite his efforts, he's still somewhat intoxicated.

"I had something else to do," she replies, dropping the CDs she had been organizing into a box, but he knows. He knows she's lying, his eyes now fixed on the dark bruise on her face, and the healing cut on her lip.

She's lying. She has obviously chosen to stay home so she wouldn't have to explain to her coworkers who had punched her in the face.

She's the one squinting at him now, her lips curling into a disapproving glower. "You've been drinking."

It would be so easy, he realizes then, to start a fight with her. All he has to do is retort something stupid and hurtful; he knows all of her buttons so well. In his state, and given her obvious frustration, it would actually be more than easy; if they argued, it would give him the perfect excuse to stay away from her without having to explain himself.

But his eyes briefly skim over the books she had been piling next to her, and he recognizes the cover of one of the many pregnancy books he had bought not so long ago. His eyes then stop over her middle section. Even though her current shirt and sitting position make the bump invisible, he knows it's there, knows their  _daughter_  is there, and he remembers the grainy black and white picture from the ultrasound screen, a couple of days ago.

His eyes start to prickle against his will, and he raises his gaze to meet Olivia's; she's not happy, but underneath her obvious annoyance, he sees her own pained distress, and suddenly, fighting with her is the last thing he wants to do.

He's still in a very shitty position, and he can't help being a smart ass.

"Jealous?" he asks her with a forced grin in reply to her drinking remark. "I'm sure you wish you could do it too right about now, might make it easier to deal with me."

She's very still and tense now, as she sits silently on the ground, looking up at him with darkened eyes, her lips pursed in serious discontentment. "Is it how  _you_ 're going to deal with this situation?" She asks calmly, but definitely grimly. "By getting drunk?"

He almost points out the fact that she can't really blame him for turning to alcohol; alcoholism runs in his family. It's in his  _genes_ , he cannot do anything about it.

But thinking about genetic traits instantly brings his thoughts back to their unborn daughter, and the prickling sensation in his eyes worsens, forcing him to swallow rather convulsively past the painful lump lodged in his throat. Once again, he cannot help thinking about what he did a few hours ago, and how he could have hurt  _her_ on top of hurting Olivia.

"I'm actually here to pick up some clothes," he says quietly, all witty remarks gone from his mind, his heart pounding in his chest as he feels successfully defeated by his misery. "I've come to the conclusion that I can't spend the night with you anymore, it will be safer for you and the baby if I stay at my old place for a while."

For a few seconds, she keeps on staring at him impressively calmly. Then, as if the meaning of his words were finally sinking in, both her hands briefly come up to her face, pressing her palms together, an obvious sign of agitation in her case, before she drops her hands."We're moving in a house together in less than three weeks, Peter," she reminds him, her voice low and too steady. "What are you gonna do, then? Sleep on the couch?"

He shrugs, trying to make it seem as if this wasn't a big deal, as if the idea of being forced to be away from her  _now_ wasn't physically painful to him. "If I have to," he says, and his voice actually cracks as he adds: "I can't take any more risk, I'm too dangerous."

But Olivia is not ready to accept his weepy explanation. "This is ridiculous, Peter," she almost shouts out, her cheeks now flushed, her eyes ablaze. "You can't keep on living like this."

"I punched you in the face!" He replies at once just as heatedly. "How is that ridiculous? What if next time, I punch you in the stomach?"

"It was an accident," she insists, her voice almost a low growl now. "You and I both know you'd  _never_  purposefully hurt me in any way, least of all the baby." Her face softens slightly, then, as her whole stature slumps, and she shakes her head, her eyes pleading him to listen to her. "Don't do this to yourself. Sleeping in another place instead of next to me won't make the nightmares stop, Peter. What you need is to get help."

It's his turn to shake his head stubbornly, averting his eyes. "I don't need help," he immediately retorts.

She moves then, and the motion at the corner of his eyes drags his gaze back to her as she stands up, her face back to an intent look of irritated resolve. "Don't lie to me," she tells him darkly. "You know you need help, and I'm not even talking about seeing a shrink. If you would just let  _me_  in, Peter." Her hands move as she speaks, her concern obvious, now. "I've given you space, because I thought you would eventually come out of this, but you haven't. You keep on carrying that bullet around, pretending everything's fine, all the while behaving as if you were grieving me, even though I'm right here with you."

He wishes he could stay immune to her words and persuade himself that she doesn't understand, doesn't get it, but everything she's saying is painfully true. He really wishes he hadn't drunk so much today, now, the world back to spinning dangerously fast around them as he stares at her with misty eyes; his heart is racing insanely fast, too, his stomach twitching almost convulsively, and he's back to breathing too loudly.

"I can't just come out of this," he says then in a low voice, and he realizes then that his shaky, clammy, fingers are playing with the hem of his pants' pocket, looking for something that isn't there. "And throwing the bullet away won't miraculously make this stop."

She has noticed his nervous tic, her eyes on his fingers, and he knows she's not fooled by his attempt at making it sound unimportant.

She raises her gaze back to his, then, and shaking her head slowly, she says: "I didn't throw the bullet away. It has become too significant to you for me to just throw it away."

He wishes with all his heart that he could simply shrug this off, because he shouldn't care so much about it. But the truth is, he actually feels the oddest kind of relief upon hearing that she hasn't discarded of the bullet. "Where is it, then?" he can't help but ask.

She remains immobile for a moment, simply staring at him. Finally, she brings a hand up to her neck, her fingers slipping under the collar of her shirt. Before long, she's pulling out what seems to be a necklace.

He doesn't understand what he's seeing right away, and even her words don't make any sense when she says: "I had it put on a chain, earlier today."

It hits him, then. The bullet, the damn thing, is now hanging from her neck, and has been for a few hours now, resting against her beating heart.

Breathing becomes incredibly difficult again, his throat closing up as shivers break through his body, and he shakes his head vigorously, a familiar panic taking hold of him.

"Take it off," he tells her, his voice raw with dread and shock, his eyes glued to the dangling bullet, so damn  _close_ to her chest, to their baby. Doesn't she get it? Doesn't she understand? She can't keep it around her neck.

"No." She answers very calmly, letting go of the chain, letting the bullet fall back against her shirt, and his vision has shrunk again, his heart pulsing against his ears.

"Olivia, take this thing off you," he repeats, fighting the sudden urge to leap at her and pulls the necklace off her himself.

"Why?" She asks, still refusing to make a move to get the thing away from her, and worse, she is now  _holding it_ , rolling it between her fingers the way he himself has done so many times.

He keeps on shaking his head, almost madly. "Please, Liv, you can't-" but he's incapable of finishing that sentence without letting everything spill out, because he's the one who can't, he just can't.

"Why Peter?" She insists, her voice almost angry, now, her fingers rolling and rolling and rolling and god she has to let it go. "Why can't I keep the bullet around my neck?"

"Because it killed you!"

The words come out of him in a desperate shout, spilling out of his mouth like a gunshot.

And in the floating instant that follows his distraught admission, he feels like he might just collapse right there on the floor, his body matching the distress of his soul. He stares right back at her, feeling the pain oozing out of him, seeping out of his pores, unable to stop himself now.

"It  _killed_  you, Olivia," he repeats in a broken voice, crushed under the weight of this sorrow he simply cannot get rid of. "You just…I heard the gunshot, but it was too late, you…I saw you…fall to the ground, and you were just…you were gone."

He's not the only one having difficulty breathing now. She's staring at him, her chest heaving, her face having constricted in a mix of aching emotions, her nostrils flaring, obviously trying to keep as much composure as she can.

"Guess what, Peter," she says with a voice that is as raw and quivering as his. And then she drops her bombshell, shrugging a shoulder in fake indifference with a painful smile: "I'm the one who died."

As she takes a step closer to him, her smile disappears, her eyes dark and intense, her brow still deeply furrowed as she shakes her head and says severely: "I was shot, in the head, and I didn't even know I was carrying our child."

Her hand as let go of the bullet to come and rest over her small bump, her fingers now clenching her shirt as pain takes over her sternness, her eyes welling up with tears. "You think it doesn't scare me?" She asks, almost in a whisper. "You think I'm not  _terrified_  when I think about how, if something like this happened to me, it can happen again?"

"Olivia…" he chokes out her name miserably, unable to do anything else, her words cutting through him like blades, ignoring the wetness he feels on his face, far beyond caring about his broken pride.

She's standing very close to him now, and he can almost feel the raw energy and emotions coming out of her, and he knows she won't stop until she's said everything she has wanted to tell him for weeks.

"Why do you think I've been losing weight?" She continues. "I'm worrying sick about you, and it's not because I'm scared of what you can do when you're asleep. I'm scared  _for_  you, for her. I need you to snap out of this, Peter," she tells him very firmly. "I need you to snap out of this, because if something else happens to me in the future, if another Bell decides to make a power source out of me, or if I'm really doomed to be a martyr, I need to know my child will be protected by her father, not by a ghost of what he used to be."

She grabs his hand and brings it to her chest, pushing it vigorously against the bullet, until it's digging in both his palm and her chest through the fabric of her shirt. "You have every right and reason to be scared," she tells him more softly as his forehead comes to rest on hers and she raises her other hand to his face, resting it on his wet cheek, and she begs him with her eyes to listen to her. "I get it, Peter. Trust me, I  _get it._  But don't you let this piece of lead scare you. It was supposed to kill me, and our baby, but it didn't. If it has to have such an impact on you, then don't let it scare you. Let it humble you."

She moves her hand from his face to the back of his head, gripping his nape tightly, almost painfully, giving more power to her every word, fierce tears now slipping out of her blazing eyes. "I'm going to keep it around my neck, Peter. I'm going to keep it, because it doesn't scare me. I survived it, and so did our daughter. And when she's old enough to understand about life, and death, and sacrifice, we will give it to her. And she will wear it proudly. You hear me? She will wear it  _proudly_."

He cannot answer with words, having lost the ability to speak, the only sounds coming out of him now being his ragged breathing mixed with hardly contained sobs. But he nods against her, nods vehemently, letting her know that she did get through after all, feeling an overwhelming mix of relief, pain and hope. One of his hands remains against her chest, having closed into a fist around the bullet; his other arm comes around her to wrap her in tight hug, and once again, she responds in kind, accepting his desperate embrace and giving everything back as he lets all of his walls crumble.

"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you," he finally says against her neck, or rather chokes out, pulling out one of the thorns that had taken roots deeply in his heart by doing so, his shame about failing her greater than anything else.

She pulls away from him, just enough so that she can bring her hands to his face, gently wiping his cheeks as she shakes her head almost imperceptibly, offering him a soft smile. "You are so stubborn," she tells him. "I don't expect you to always be able to protect me, especially since you and I both know I'm going to tell you I don't need to be protected anyway."

But he doesn't smile, because they also both know it is a lie.

She pulls his face down to hers again, pressing her nose against his as she whispers against his lips: "We're okay, Peter. We're okay."

He doesn't know if she means him and her, or her and the baby.

Knowing Olivia, she probably means the three of them.

"We're okay," she repeats, her thumb tracing slow circles over the back of his neck. "So please. Let it go."

Another long moment passes, but he eventually unclenches his fingers and releases the bullet, letting it fall against her beating heart, and against his as well as he wraps her more fully in his arms, pressing their chests together, and feeling the slightest pressure from her growing bump against him. And he thinks about  _her_ , then, about their little girl, thinks about what Olivia has said.

Even though she's only a few inches long right now, barely bigger than an avocado, he can already see her in his mind's eye, as selfless and brave as her mother, and undoubtedly twice as beautiful and kind. He pictures her vividly, wearing the bullet around her neck, keeping it as a token of inexorable sacrifice, of extraordinary survival.

Because there is not a trace of doubt in his heart that she will be extraordinary. After all, she has been so from the very, very start.

Olivia is right. She should wear it proudly.

_We're okay_

_We really are_

And so, at long last, Peter lets it go.


End file.
